


Over Tea

by LMX



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Science, Tea
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-08
Updated: 2014-01-08
Packaged: 2018-01-08 01:21:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1126721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LMX/pseuds/LMX
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Looking back, it wouldn't have been right for their first real conversation to have been anywhere else...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over Tea

If there was one thing Jemma Simmons really couldn't understand about places like the hub it was the air conditioning. Not that she objected - no, definitely not. There was nothing like the reliability of being able to run experiments knowing it would be exactly the same temperature today as it was tomorrow as it would be in six months time.

It was the contrast, was the thing.

For example today, when it was a baking 32 degrees (yes, Celcius, because she refuses to use a temperature scale based on arbitrary values) outside, and she'd decided to walk into work instead of cycle because it was too hot for the exertion. Between that experience and stepping into the lab, she had added a t-shirt under her shirt, and another jumper before her lab coat (which made her look a little like the Michelin man, she knew), and her hands were still freezing under nitrile.

Still, in the beautifully controlled environment, she'd finally managed a protein crystallisation she'd been working on for weeks now, carefully coaxing the tertiary structure out of water, willing it to fold properly. She'd decided to take a tea break at the last minute, because there was such thing as over attention and if she breathed on the vial wrong it could affect the outcome (and she was fairly sure the protein was alien - as in, not-of-this-world, so she wasn't sure she was going to get any more once this tiny amount was used up).

She'd walked towards the break room, with an itchy kind of desire to go back and check everything was alright - that she'd locked the fume hood, that the extraction was on, that it was cold enough, that there was enough water in the reservoir, that she'd locked the fume hood - and nearly collided with Leo Fitz as they tried to get through the break room door at the same time.

They'd spent a little time together in this hub-based research facility, but were still in that early stage of getting-to-know-you, where mostly what they talked about was their work - and given they had very little knowledge or interest in each others' fields, those conversations weren't all that long.

He blinked up at her as if only just noticing they'd tried to enter the same space at the same time and now they were both stood outside the break room, stalled. They went through a stilted round of 'after you', 'no, after you's, and eventually, Jemma took the initiative and walked into the room, slumping into the sofa nearest the propped window (illicit, it was compromising the air cycling unit and probably wasting precious electricity, but Jemma hadn't opened it so she could let herself enjoy the pervading warmth without feeling bad). She let the heat outside roll over her shoulders and shed her jumper.

"Tea?" Fitz offered, heading for the little kitchenette.

Jemma said yes automatically, because Tea! YES! But then worried moments later that Scotland was still a different country to England, really (even though Britain's so small now she's seen the whole world) and what if they made tea differently there? She'd never had Scottish tea, she'd grown up on Yorkshire Tea and her parents always stocked her bags full of it at the end of every visit home.

Maybe he'd bring her something black and sludgy, and she'd have to drink it like she did the sour white chai out of the SHIELD outpost in India, just to be polite, and force her face into a look of fake delight. Maybe he'd make it with pre-boiled water, or worse... microwave it.

Did she have time to go back to her lab and get her stash of tea bags? Maybe he'd let her make a cup herself if she asked nicely?

She waited, knowing it was too late to take back the request, trying to read one of the journals that had been left out on the table and also discretely listen in to the goings on in the little kitchen. She didn't take in much of the scientific material - but she heard a kettle boil and then a spoon stirring almost immediately afterwards. All good signs. Her PhD adviser had been Canadian, and had made coffee using the hot water tap in the wash room. She'd never risked asking him for tea.

"Sugar?" came a distant shout, and she debated her answer carefully, knowing she'd be judged on it.

"Just one please," she settled on, because she knew a trainee who measured sugar with a tablespoon and had been awake for nearly two days straight on the cup of coffee he had made for her.

Two sturdy mugs were plonked with not much care on the coffee table - one on top of the stack of PhD theses which obviously made up the usual coaster, heavily ring-marked as they were, and the other more precisely on a floppy disk-turned-coaster, handle facing her way.

"My Mum..." Fitz started as he slumped into the chair opposite. There was a hesitation there that might have seemed strange three years ago, but she knew it instinctively now - and had started doing it herself - it was the 'This is SHIELD where 90% of applicants are orphans, generally for violent, bloody reasons and I don't know how you're going to react to me mentioning my family' pause. She smiled reassuringly, and Fitz seemed to relax a little. "My Mum hates tea, doesn't drink anything but Irn-bru and Lucozade. My Dad tries to disown her every time we visit with anyone."

Jemma picked up the mug tentatively, and held it in front of her nose, inhaling. Her hands were already warming, and the steam rushed to do the same to her insides. It smelled good, right, and she thought if she was in worse company she'd feel homesick, but it was hard when Fitz was sitting right there with his accent and his fake-tartan sweater and his ridiculous grin as he hugged his own mug. A little bit of home from home.

"Well, I guess that's very patriotic of her," she managed eventually.

"Nah," Fitz denied. "She just enjoys winding everyone up."

She would realise much later that the first conversation - real conversation, they ever had was over tea in a freezing cold research wing on a very hot day in the hub. Somehow it seems right.

**Author's Note:**

> To file under 'fandoms I was really planning not to get drawn into at a fic-writing-level'... Oh well. Sorry if this concept has been written before, just wanted to put it down on paper.


End file.
